The South. I’ve loved it so much I’ve sworn I would never leave and I’ve hated it so much I’ve sworn I would never come back. With 19 years lived, learned and loved, I’m now somewhere in the middle. Leaving the region for a longer period of time has allowed me to view it through ever-so-slightly rose-tinted glasses. The South and I have a dynamic similar to siblings. I can make fun of it and talk negatively about it all I want, but as soon as I hear someone else making fun of my beloved Southern ways, it is war. I love the food and the constant “How are you?”’s. I love the lightning bugs and country music blaring out of speakers under the sweltering sun. Summer Awad speaks to her own experience as a Palestinian-Southern person in her poem “The South speaks her mind,” and it’s the most moving piece of writing I’ve read in weeks.
“the South speaks her mind
Stop talking about me like I’m not here.
Stop stroking my hair
and wrapping your lips
around my darlins and honeys
while you tell me you know
what’s best for me,
I will bless my own heart,
thank you very much”
Among the people in my hometown, I am known for being too ambitious. I told my fifth-grade English teacher that I was looking forward to her vote in the 2040 election. When I graduated high school, she told me she couldn’t wait to see me run. Luckily for every other inhabitant of this world, I will never run for president. My family got used to hearing me endlessly talk about the unrealistic expectations I had for myself. Going to the University of Michigan, becoming president and being a journalist in New York were all some of the “random hyper fixations little Sarah has gained that she’ll never actually achieve.” Still, they always indulged my dreams until one of them became reality: I was accepted into the University of Michigan.
As winter turned into spring, my life bloomed as well. I could see my dreams forming in front of my own eyes. I wasn’t listening to Foster The People as I sped down back roads, begging the stars to make my wish come true anymore. My star found me in the dark cave of my bedroom and brought me to the front porch. I had never been more excited about anything in my entire life. I cried in the arms of my Chemistry teacher with pure, unadulterated joy. At last, I had a ticket out. So, naturally, when my weekly family dinner rolled around, I was so excited to tell them. At that point, I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to go, but I was still excited just to have the possibility. After a long swig of McDonald’s Sprite to soothe my nerves, I worked up the courage to tell them.
“I got into Michigan!”
“I heard. You shouldn’t go.”
“But it’s such a great opportunity! Michigan is such a great school.”
“What about Auburn? What about Sewanee? What about all of the other places you said you were going to go to? They’re all just fine.”
This moment made clear to me what rural Southern culture really is. These people that stroked my hair and nurtured me and swore they were on my side, declared that what they wanted was more important than what I had dreamt of for my entire adolescence. If it means getting out, it isn’t for you, “honey.”
“Stop assuming I am white
and complacent, stop running
your mouth about my level of
education, stop joking
that you should have let me
secede, that I’m what happens
when sisters and
brothers breed”
When I tell people I am from Alabama, almost every single person’s face falls immediately. It has become a game to me. I either get a not-so-hidden frown or an “Oh my god, where’s your accent then?” I can feel people’s demeanor change. It’s as if they anticipate me being incompetent as soon as I reach the state’s fourth syllable. I don’t blame them — to an outside eye, it’s not as if the South has made any noticeable effort to change its reputation. A question I get asked more than I expected is “Do you guys really fuck your cousins?” “It was only one time” is my typical response. I like this interaction because more often than not, people believe me! Their eyes widen. I chuckle inauthentically. They realize I’m joking. A sigh of relief rids the air of the lingering discomfort. Suddenly, there isn’t room for you to assume I’m the stupid one in this crowded party.
“I am not a rape joke,
not your cousin
who’s “a little slow,”
I have been carving a path
through these mountains
and turning herbs into blood
from vagina
since before you could pronounce
the word
abortion”
Southerners are fighters. Be it a rivalry football game or our coveted sweet tea, strength is in our blood. My great-grandfather, too poor to afford builders, built his house with the help of no one but his son. It took him a decade and it couldn’t pass inspections, but he was proud to say he cleared that land and wired that light switch himself. That is what being Southern is. You work all day for your family and pray to God that one of these days you’ll get to sit on the porch and hear the cicadas sing as the night falls instead of working the third shift. Built on hard work, the South has been fighting against the suffocating heat for as long as I can remember because they have to. The humidity doesn’t cease when the sun goes down and neither does the work that needs to be done. Southerners have been paving the way for change for as long as I can remember, but because some of it isn’t nationally recognized, many are unaware.
“This porch in muggy mosquito
weather is for talking strategy,
not gossip, licking
resistance off my fingers
from my jackfruit barbeque –
don’t act surprised
Your two cents
is worth about
as much as the sugar packets
you give me for your cold
unsweet tea, it’s not my fault
you don’t understand solubility”
Unsweet tea is useless in the South. If you bring unsweet tea to a potluck, you’re coming home with a few concerned looks under your belt and a full jug of tea. Many believe they understand the rural South, but unless you’ve lived through that tragedy, you’ll never understand. You can try to put 15 packets of Splenda in your blasphemous tea, but it will never be sweet tea. You can never understand the push and pull of being Southern. The inability to be without the summer sun, yet sheltering inside to avoid it. The conversations with strangers, the strum of a banjo and the community can only be found under the green trees with a mason jar of sweet tea and cubed ice.
“You wear your condescension
like a sombrero on Cinco de
Mayo, scoffing at me until you
want some good biscuits or
a backroad photo op,
I am not your fairweather friend,
I am not one of those pennies
smashed into a souvenir,
imprinted with what is quaint
and what you’d like to remember,”
Someone once asked me verbatim “What even is Southern culture?” People love that I’m Southern when I pull out my accent at parties and talk about the country music that was the soundtrack to my childhood. They love the easy parts, but the difficult and disappointing history that the South holds is either swept under the rug or insulted. I spent most of my life hating where I am from. You don’t need to educate me about Southern racism or homophobia. My education came from real conversations and situations, not videos on Twitter and textbooks. I am not only Southern when it’s convenient for me to impress. I am Southern whenever I am disappointed in my heritage and whenever I am proud of it. I forged my own place in this world, and through that, I have learned more about my culture than you could ever find out from watching your white savior movies and listening to Tyler Childers.
“My accent is not “cute,”
it is imbued
with folk wisdom and freedom
songs, do you know how much
paper and marker is plastered
on the walls of church fellowship halls,
scribbles in the shape of ideas
you think you taught us,
We can hear you
talking behind our backs,
but not over our heads,
would you hand me the bug spray,
sweetheart,
so I can protect
myself from your bloodsucking,”
The most common meeting place in Southern culture is the church. I learned almost every moral I hold in those painted cinder block walls. The greatest of these are to love, to always put others before yourself and to treat others the way you want to be treated. These words continuously ring in my ears. I don’t find myself recalling Bible verses in times of need anymore, but I will never get away from the lessons learned with the company of Kool-Aid and the choir. Many view the South as a lost cause, a place that can never be helped. They disregard the Southern struggle and forget that we are far more educated than you might think. Maybe my parents didn’t listen to NPR on the way to school, but that was only because my single mother’s 2005 Ford Explorer didn’t have Bluetooth. I had no idea about the outside world for quite a while, but I knew how to love well, which is less than many can say at nine years old.
“You’re just like these damn mosquitos,
taking what tastes good,
sucking it through a self-righteous
reusable straw,
and leaving nothing
But a swollen, useless,
Itch.”
You listen to our music and you order fried chicken and waffles at brunch. Return to me whenever you’re ready to accept all that the South is. Not just the home of warm weather and hospitality. The bug spray stopped working and before I knew it all of my Southern blood was gone, an occurrence that will never happen again.
Daily Arts Writer Sarah Patterson can be reached at sarahpat@umich.edu.
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